The Adventures of Darryl Lemos and CE 132 (ft. Thales and his Famous Line "Water is life")

One academic year has passed before I encountered another major subject in sanitary engineering. At the start of the semester, it was this "Agh-wala-na-akong-naaalala-sa-CE-131" feeling that initially stumbled upon me, knowing that CE 131 involves a lot of equations and concepts that must be fully understood to understand the subject as well. But when I learned that Sir O (Prof. Christian Orozco) would be our instructor for this subject, I know that we were in good hands (*wink wink*). He is also our instructor in CE 21 and I really believe that he is one of the best lecturers that I've encountered so far in the Institute of Civil Engineering. He makes learning easier by filling the classroom with humor, excitement, and relating the lessons with real-world applications. And the rest was history.

CE 132 involves two general concepts: the design of water treatment system and the design of wastewater treatment system. What I really like the most about these topics is its application to the actual daily living. Imagine: you wake up everyday, you brush your teeth and you consume WATER. You spit out on a sink and it's already WASTEWATER. You defecate and your poop becomes WASTEWATER, together with the WATER that you use to flush it. You take a bath and you consume WATER again. Dirty water from your bath becomes WASTEWATER. And so on and so forth of the daily activities that involve the use of the materials and equipment that are designed in CE 132.

This subject also allowed me to experience new adventures. First of them all is the visual assessment of the UP Lagoon wherein our life (no, not really; it's actually the shoes and clothes) was on the line when we tested the quantitative parameters of the area using Horiba. Second is when we looked for a water body outside UP to perform the same activity, which turned out to be San Juan River (near Araneta). It was actually my first time to get into that area which is a home for some informal settling families. I almost lost my life (chos) when we would go down to observe the river more closely by using an improvised ladder made of wood. I doubted if the ladder could carry me so I was hesitant at first. But when I saw my groupmates (who are actually girls except Eugene and I), I packed all the courage in my heart and confronted the adversity (hahaha), and with this, we learned that except from the nearby residents, habitat of some not-so-pleasing organisms also exist in the water body (pasintabi po sa mga kumakain).

If there are three lessons in CE 132 that, I must say, are applicable to life:

(1) NEVER RELY ON NUMBERS. USE COMMON SENSE. Like life (and love *wink wink*), numbers just provide the analytics. In the design of water or wastewater treatment facility, use rationality and never try to use formulas or equations if unnecessary. This is actually applicable to all of my subjects but then, it was my first in CE 132 project that we designed a system that is not that dependent on equations and is more inclined to the explanations and the effectivity and compatibility of the design with the site requirements (oxidation pond for CS Complex by the way).

(2) WAG UMASA. MASAKIT. Like life (and love again *wink wink*), hoping is not always the best option. This is what we learned when we seek for data for the population and water consumption of CS Complex and the person/s in-charge of the *censored* with whom we would ask the data for were not around.

(3) HELP REDUCE NOISE POLLUTION. Or the fun of learning will be gone if tension is in the atmosphere between the teacher and the students. (Apologies, Sir O.) :(((

As a final message, I would like to thank my groupmates for making this subject enjoyable. Sana maulit yung ganitong mga adventures natin in the future, at sana makasakay ulit ako sa kotse ni Lodette nang hindi na tanghaling tapat dahil nakakatunaw ng taba ang init sa may upuan (chos lang). More importantly, I would like to thank Sir O for this fun subject, and I do hope that this will not be the last time that I will be your student in a class. But preferably not on CE 132 again. :)))

This is Darryl Lemos. and this is #myCE132.